Emerging Technologies are Changing the IT Job Market

Priority No. 1 today: BYOD. What’s next and how do you plan to keep up with it? Image: IntelFreePress/Flickr

Stardate: 523201.3, U.S.A.– Technology is changing and growing so fast that a reference to the future, and Star Trek, seems appropriate.

I’m often asked about the direction of the technology market and where it’s headed; the good news is that IT job opportunities are plentiful across the nation. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the number of U.S. employees working in applications and systems software developer jobs increased by 5.5 percent from 2011-2012, while the number of employees working in database, network and computer systems administrator occupations increased by 2.6 percent in the same year. The bad news, though, is that you have to be competitive about applying for these jobs and keep up with the industry’s pace.

If you are looking for your next dream job, your skills must be relevant; old technology is making way for new in ways we may never have imagined. In essence, the world of SDN, Converged Infrastructure, BYOD, Virtualization, ITaaS, SDS, and PAaaS, and of course, “The Cloud,” has arrived.

What do these trends mean and what new technologies are important for U.S. employers, vendors, employees and other relevant IT functions?

You must be current, flexible, adaptable and willing to learn. The market is no longer looking for “Networking”, or “Server” or “Storage” specialists; it’s looking for people who understand them all and who understand why they’re important. This transcends the end users, the companies delivering those technologies, and the companies developing those technologies.

Talent is limited and many companies are vying for it. Therefore, generous, even outrageous, offers are made for qualified job candidates, including large base salaries, bonuses, stock options and many other perks. The risk within these types of organizations may be fairly significant, but with an abundance of startups and investments in the IT market, there will likely be another job opportunity that is the right fit.

In the information technology industry, mediocrity is not an option. The market is as rich with opportunity now as ever in the history of technology. If you look at few of them you can see why there is such a need for talent. For example, converged infrastructure is the combining of server, storage, networking, virtualization, and automation software into a single platform. When you add in the elements of applications like Oracle, SAP, Exchange, Citrix VDI, etc., you have a very complex environment.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) expertise includes device management and usability, mobility, application knowledge and delivery and the usage of these toolsets and workloads on multiple devices. Smartphone and tablet technologies are evolving now and have only been in use for less than six years. Gaining expertise with this new technology is a real-time challenge, similar to running along the side of a speeding train and trying to jump on. It should be a learning priority.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is another quickly evolving technology. It’s no longer sufficient to just be an expert at networking topologies, but you must have experience with virtualization and control panel methods.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) is one of the latest developments in storage optimization; the fastest growing area of technology is storage and the growth of unstructured data. The new SDS platforms allow for simpler management of the data growth while also optimizing traditional storage and taking advantage of underutilized storage. Again, a fast moving train to jump on.

These are just a few of the new growing technologies available today, none of which existed five years ago. What’s next and how do you plan to keep up with it?

Tony Balistrieri is Vice President of Partner Strategy at FusionStorm.